The appeal of rugby is lost in translation despite Ireland's success

Munster fans practically took over Cardiff before the 2008 Heineken Cup final win over Toulouse. Photograph: David Rogers/Getty Images

Greetings from Limerick. I'm here, at the home of Munster Rugby, along with Rory McGrath and Griff Rhys Jones, filming another one of those Three Men in a Boat documentaries the Beeb get us to do to fulfil its quota for gentle comedy travelogues, the like of which have spread across the telly schedules in recent years like nothing else.

This time our gentle mockery and swooping helicopter shots took us to Ireland, which might sound like a plug, but since I have no idea when the programme is going to be broadcast, it's a relatively pointless one.

It is, however, the context for this week's sporting dilemma. This afternoon Munster play the second of their Heineken Cup matches, at home against…... It's a critical one, after last week's defeat by…... With every point now vital in the push to regain the trophy they last won in…...

My knowledge of rugby is a little sketchy.

And this causes no end of grief to me, particularly in the past few years as the Ireland national team and the provincial sides of Munster and Leinster have achieved such notable success. Munster play in red, by the way, and Leinster in blue.

In these past few years, the ascent of Irish rugby has led to it becoming one of those conversational shorthands that strangers use to build bridges, or at least break an awkward pause. Countless are the times that English people, at a loss for the next gambit, will offer "Big weekend for your boys." And I will stare at them dumbly. "I'm sorry. What do you mean? Which boys?"

"The rugby team, of course. Ha ha, you with the jokes. The rugby team. Big weekend."

And I'll be left trying to explain with just an exasperated look that rugby in Dublin is the preserve of the attendees of a number of well-to-do schools and for those of us from the slightly grimier schools who played gaelic football or hurling or football, it wasn't our party and we had to leave it to the moneyed classes to attend their internationals and pat themselves on the back.

That can be a lot of information to get across in a grimace and, besides, they were only being polite and weren't expecting a sudden plunge into class warfare.

Of course, my chippiness has been eroded as I've grown up, partly because I've met so many Irish rugby players and they are, to a man, charming, well-educated and good people to have around in a nightclub.

There remains a baggage from this time, however, in as much as I just don't get rugby as a game. I get the gist, but half a second after the rest of a crowd. I speak holiday rugby, I suppose. I need someone beside me to translate all the time. Me at a rugby match is like bringing your mother to see the Bourne Ultimatum.

I don't think I'm alone in this, by the way. The last big match I attended was Ireland against France in the 2007 World Cup and a peculiar thing kept happening. When a foul was called the entire stadium would turn to the big screens for a replay and, along with the recap, an explanation of the exact nature of the offence would flash up as a bilingual subtitle.

This was an innovation that managed to be both helpful and damning. Every time a technical brouhaha would occur, 80,000 people would crane upwards, read the screen and give a minor ah of enlightenment. Maybe this is a sport with too many rules.

Either way, I'm a tourist here. And I have been offered a ticket to see Munster play at Thomond Park. Generally, I have no qualm at being a sports tourist. I spent an extremely enjoyable afternoon once at a sumo tournament in Tokyo, clapping the spectacle and nodding furiously to the Japanese around me. Similarly, I hope to attend the Palio di Siena, the Monaco grand prix and the Kentucky Derby. All classic sporting events, and in sports I know next to nothing about.

As sports fans, we should love the spectacle. We should take these once‑in-a lifetime opportunities when they come up. This may be a game too far, though. If I blag my way in, won't I be keeping a real fan out? And in Limerick, where the tickets are like gold dust, I can even see the face of the disappointed Munster fan draped in the flag and able to actually, y'know, name all the players.

While I hate the one-upmanship of fans – "you don't deserve to be here … where were you when … " – this might be a match best watched in a pub.

Now that I start to think about it, I can't be sure about that day in Tokyo either. Maybe it wasn't the victimless crime I first thought. Maybe I was the cause of a tearful sumo enthusiast sitting on the pavement outside the dojo bitterly disappointed and cursing my ancestors, politely.